Inquiry Concerning Political Justice by William Godwin 1793 INQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN MORALS AND HAPPINESS BOOK I: OF THE POWERS OF MAN CONSIDERED IN HIS SOCIAL CAPACITY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The object proposed in the following work is an investigation concerning that form of public or political society, that system of intercourse and reciprocal action, extending beyond the bounds of a single family, which shall be found most to conduce to the general benefit. How may the peculiar and independent operation of each individual in the social state most effectually be preserved? How may the security each man ought to possess, as to his life, and the employment of his faculties according to the dictates of his own understanding, be most certainly defended from invasion? How may the indi...
BOOK IV OF THE OPERATION OF OPINION IN SOCIETIES AND INDIVIDUALS CHAPTER II OF REVOLUTIONS Duty of a citizen as to the constitution of his country. - No scheme of government perfect or final. - Revolutionary measures, during their operation, inimical to independence - and intellectual inquiry. - Period of their operation. - Revolutions accompanied with blood - crude and premature in their effects - uncertain in point of success. - Conviction of the understanding an adequate means of demolishing political abuse. - The progress of conviction not tardy and feeble - not precarious. - Revolutions in some cases to be looked for. THE question of resistance is closely connected with that of revolutions. It may be proper therefore, before we dismiss this part of the subject, to enter into some disquisition respecting the nature and effects of that species of event which is commonly known by...
This article appears in Anarchy Archives with the permission of the author. From: Telos, no. 50 (Winter 1981-82). Telos Discussions: FINDING THE SUBJECT: NOTES ON WHITEBOOK AND "HABERMAS LTD." by Murray Bookchin "For a whole series of reasons, the reputation of Karl Marx has been reborn in a new form, the form of Marx as a sociologist. I believe that this is error: that Marx neither was -- nor in a very important sense intended to be -- a sociologist..." Donald G. Macrae Whitebook has known for years that I reject the very use of the word "modernity." So his attempt to dissociate me from it is quite gratuitous. He also knows that I reject it for reasons that have nothing to do with a desire to return to "premodernity." I also reject "so... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
Editor's Note and Foreword Excerpted from the book; Individual Liberty: Selections From the Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker Vanguard Press, New York, 1926 Kraus Reprint Co., Millwood, NY, 1973. PUBLISHER'S NOTE C.L.S., the editor and compiler of this book, has known Benjamin R. Tucker personally since 1891, having entered his employ at that time in the mechanical department of Liberty, Mr. Tucker's journal for the exposition of Individualist Anarchism. After that time and until the final suspension of publication of Liberty, C.L.S. contributed many articles to the columns of that periodical, both signed and unsigned, usually in the editorial department. For a considerable period he had complete editorial charge, during Mr. Tucker's absence. Thus the present work has been performed by one who has entire familiarity with Liberty's philosophy and who perhaps a...
No Place for a Promise. [Liberty, November 12, 1892.] A Promise, according to the common acceptation of the term, is a binding declaration made by one person to another to do, or not to do, a certain act at some future time. According to this definition, there can, I think, be no place for a promise in a harmonious progressive world. Promises and progress are incompatible, unless all the parties are, at all times, as free to break them as they were to make them; and this admission eliminates the binding element, and, therefore, destroys the popular meaning of a promise.(51 ¶ 1) In a progressive world we know more to-morrow than we know to-day. Also harmony implies absence of...
THOUGHTS ON MAN, HIS NATURE, PRODUCTIONS AND DISCOVERIES INTERSPERSED WITH SOME PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE AUTHOR by WILLIAM GODWIN Oh, the blood more stirs To rouse a lion, than to start a hare! - SHAKESPEARE LONDON: EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE. 1831. PREFACE In the ensuing volume I have attempted to give a defined and permanent form to a variety of thoughts, which have occurred to my mind in the course of thirty-four years, it being so long since I published a volume, entitled, the Enquirer,--thoughts, which, if they have presented themselves to other men, have, at least so far as I am aware, never been given to the public through the medium of the press. During a part of this period I had remained to a considerable degree unoccupied in my character of an author, and...